However, chatbots are not just limited to answering queries and providing basic knowledge. They can work as an aid to the teacher/instructor by identifying spelling and grammatical mistakes with precision, checking homework, assigning projects, and, more importantly, keeping track of students' progress and achievements. A human can only do so much, whereas a bot has virtually an infinite capacity to store and analyse all data.

To inspire your first (or next) foray into the weird and wonderful world of chatbots, we've compiled a list of seven brands whose bot-based campaigns were fueled by an astute knowledge of their target audiences and solid copywriting. Check them out below, and start considering if a chatbot is the right move for your own company's next big marketing campaign.

“The chat space is sort of the last unpolluted space [on your phone],” said Sam Mandel, who works at the startup studio Betaworks and is also building a weather bot for Slack called Poncho. “It’s like the National Park of people’s online experience. Right now, the way people use chat services, it’s really a good private space that you control.” (That, of course, could quickly go sour if early implementations are too spammy or useless.)

A chatbot (also known as a talkbots, chatterbot, Bot, IM bot, interactive agent, or Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods.[1] Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatterbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler systems scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.
Reports of political interferences in recent elections, including the 2016 US and 2017 UK general elections,[3] have set the notion of botting being more prevalent because of the ethics that is challenged between the bot’s design and the bot’s designer. According to Emilio Ferrara, a computer scientist from the University of Southern California reporting on Communications of the ACM,[4] the lack of resources available to implement fact-checking and information verification results in the large volumes of false reports and claims made on these bots in social media platforms. In the case of Twitter, most of these bots are programmed with searching filter capabilities that target key words and phrases that reflect in favor and against political agendas and retweet them. While the attention of bots is programmed to spread unverified information throughout the social media platform,[5] it is a challenge that programmers face in the wake of a hostile political climate. Binary functions are designated to the programs and using an Application Program interface embedded in the social media website executes the functions tasked. The Bot Effect is what Ferrera reports as when the socialization of bots and human users creates a vulnerability to the leaking of personal information and polarizing influences outside the ethics of the bot’s code. According to Guillory Kramer in his study, he observes the behavior of emotionally volatile users and the impact the bots have on the users, altering the perception of reality.
All of these conversational technologies employ natural-language-recognition capabilities to discern what the user is saying, and other sophisticated intelligence tools to determine what he or she truly needs to know. These technologies are beginning to use machine learning to learn from interactions and improve the resulting recommendations and responses.
Keep it conversational: Chatbots help make it easy for users to find the information they need. Users can ask questions in a conversational way, and the chatbots can help them refine their searches through their responses and follow-up questions. Having had substantial experience with personal assistants on their smartphones and elsewhere, users today expect this level of informal interaction. When chatbot users are happy, the organizations employing the chatbots benefit.
Back in April, National Geographic launched a Facebook Messenger bot to promote their new show about the theoretical physicist's work and personal life. Developed by 360i, the charismatic Einstein bot reintroduced audiences to the scientific figure in a more intimate setting, inviting them to learn about the lesser-known aspects of his life through a friendly, natural conversation with the man himself.
We’ve just released a major new report, The CIO’s Guide To Automation, AI, And Robotics. We find that, to stay ahead, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and other executives integrating leading-edge technologies into their companies’ operations and business models must turn their attention to automation technologies, including intelligent machines, robotic process automation (RPA) bots, artificial intelligence, and physical […]
Efforts by servers hosting websites to counteract bots vary. Servers may choose to outline rules on the behaviour of internet bots by implementing a robots.txt file: this file is simply text stating the rules governing a bot's behaviour on that server. Any bot that does not follow these rules when interacting with (or 'spidering') any server should, in theory, be denied access to, or removed from, the affected website. If the only rule implementation by a server is a posted text file with no associated program/software/app, then adhering to those rules is entirely voluntary – in reality there is no way to enforce those rules, or even to ensure that a bot's creator or implementer acknowledges, or even reads, the robots.txt file contents. Some bots are "good" – e.g. search engine spiders – while others can be used to launch malicious and harsh attacks, most notably, in political campaigns.[2]
A chatbot (sometimes referred to as a chatterbot) is programming that simulates the conversation or "chatter" of a human being through text or voice interactions. Chatbot virtual assistants are increasingly being used to handle simple, look-up tasks in both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) environments. The addition of chatbot assistants not only reduces overhead costs by making better use of support staff time, it also allows companies to provide a level of customer service during hours when live agents aren't available.
Amazon’s Echo device has been a surprise hit, reaching over 3M units sold in less than 18 months. Although part of this success can be attributed to the massive awareness-building power of the Amazon.com homepage, the device receives positive reviews from customers and experts alike, and has even prompted Google to develop its own version of the same device, Google Home.
Jabberwacky learns new responses and context based on real-time user interactions, rather than being driven from a static database. Some more recent chatbots also combine real-time learning with evolutionary algorithms that optimise their ability to communicate based on each conversation held. Still, there is currently no general purpose conversational artificial intelligence, and some software developers focus on the practical aspect, information retrieval.